To launch our new theme on extremism and violence, SEN Journal: Online Exclusives is delighted to present a specially commissioned piece by Amy Cooter on the issue of predicting violent action. Over the next few weeks, we will be posting a selection of previews from the print edition of the journal as well as number of new pieces of writing on this new theme.
When researching groups on the political far-right, an important and commonly asked question is: How can we predict which groups or individuals will eventually participate in violent action? In recent weeks, this question has become increasingly pertinent as we’ve witnessed the sentencing of Norway’s mass murderer Anders Breivik and numerous mass shootings in the U.S., including Wade Page’s terrorism at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin.
Human behaviour is an incredibly complex and fluid amalgam of social and psychological factors, and it is unlikely that we will ever develop an accurate predictive tool to consistently identify such perpetrators before they act. Such a tool certainly cannot be developed in a short blog post, but here I will briefly present some issues that are important when assessing violent events of this nature.